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47 feared dead in Taiwan plane crash

TAIPEI — A domestic plane landing in stormy weather crashed outside an airport on a small Taiwanese island late yesterday, and the Transport Minister said 47 people were feared dead.

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TAIPEI — A domestic plane landing in stormy weather crashed outside an airport on a small Taiwanese island late yesterday, and the Transport Minister said 47 people were feared dead.

Taiwan’s Transport Minister Yeh Kuang-shih was quoted by the government’s Central News Agency as saying another 11 people were injured after the plane crashed and caught fire when it was making a second attempt at landing. Mr Yeh said the flight carried 58 passengers and crew members.

Flight GE222, a 70-seat twin-engine turboprop short-haul regional aircraft manufactured by French-Italian firm ATR, was operated by Taiwanese airline TransAsia Airways. It was heading from the southern port city of Kaohsiung to the island of Penghu, halfway between the Chinese mainland and Taiwan in the Taiwan Strait, according to the Taiwanese news agency.

President Ma Ying-jeou called it “a very sad day in the history of Taiwanese aviation” and ordered authorities to quickly clarify the details, said a spokesman for his office.

The plane crashed near the runway of the Magong airport in Penghu. Nearby buildings and cars were damaged by the debris from the plane but no one was killed or hurt. The Central News Agency said the plane left Kaohsiung at 5:43pm local/Singapore time, but lost contact with controllers at 7.06pm.

“The control tower lost contact with the aircraft soon after they requested a go-around (second attempt to land),” said Ms Jean Shen, the Civil Aeronautics Administration director. The flight had been delayed because of the weather conditions, she said.

Pictures on local media showed a handful of firefighters using flashlights to look at wreckage in the darkness and soldiers on the scene, the South China Morning Post reported.

Taiwanese Defence Ministry spokesman Maj Gen Luo Shou-he said about 200 military personnel were sent to help recover the people who were on the plane, according to the Central News Agency. There were conflicting reports over the number of casualties as the civil aviation authorities said that 51 were thought to have died, contradicting the Transport Minister’s statements that 47 people were believed to be feared dead.

Ms Shen said conditions at the site were difficult, complicating efforts to confirm the death toll. “It’s chaotic on the scene,” she told Reuters.

Television networks aired footage of TransAsia’s president, Chooi Yee-choong, bowing in apology. “We express our deepest apologies to every one for this unfortunate event.”

Penghu is a lightly populated island that averages about two flights a day from Taipei. Many flights were cancelled as a result of Typhoon Matmo, which slammed into Taiwan yesterday with heavy rains and strong winds, shutting financial markets and schools. However, the BBC reported that the warning was lifted around 5.30pm, just minutes before the flight took off.

Visibility as the plane approached was 1,600m, which met standards for landing and two flights had landed before GE222, the aviation agency reported. ATR spokesman David Vargas told the BBC it was seeking more information to determine what went wrong.

Apart from yesterday’s event, Taiwan’s aviation safety council says Transasia has had a total of eight incidents since 2002, including six involving the ATR 72. AGENCIES

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